Greedy Goblin

Friday, November 22, 2013

Formulating the new plan

Before someone could actually make a difference, he must plan what he wants to achieve. Most leaders (in games and in real life too) skip that, simply because they don’t care how the World should look like as long as they are sitting on top of it. He really didn’t want that region, he just wanted a space-important position. If this position is in a sov-holder or in a “roaming PvP” alliance, he can’t care less. BoodaBooda, a model failure leader, literally destroyed his alliance for the simple goal of keeping his seat. He could easily align it to any coalitions, but he didn’t want to kiss the ring of The Mittani, Vince Draken or Mactep even when it became obvious that TEST alone can’t hold its space. Please note that the “he defended the independence of the members” is nonsense, as the line member is always under command and he can’t care less who is giving the orders, Vee, PGL, Elo or a TEST FC.

Honestly, my ganking project wasn’t much better. Its main goal was to let me make something space-important. I mean, how would EVE be different if busy gankers would massacre every dumbass who neither bothers to tank, nor to watch his surroundings? The same people would have been mining the same ores, just in Procurers. The ganking project wasn’t a tool for a goal, it was a goal itself. In retrospective it wasn’t better than that ridiculous “Northern Army”.

So before I’d start to plan what I’ll do, I have to plan what kind of community I want to build, find people who agree and just after that figure out actual steps.

This model society would be economy-focused. If you have no money, you have no means to do anything and you are locked into comedy fleets. My TEST experience clearly proved that a “battlecruiser fleet” with less battlecruisers than Rifters won’t be able to fight. And we aren’t in 2010 when a bunch of Drakes could get things done. There are supercapital blobs, there are triage supported T3 or faction BS fleets, to stand up to that, the average member, and not just a small elite must be able to field Dread, Slowcat or an 1B subcap and replace it when lost. Those who “just want some PvP fun” have little place in this society, they belong to Empire space where they can lol around all day.

On the other hand it cannot be a “carebear” society. My own stupid ganking numbers prove that a single man who can fit a ship can literally massacre thousands who can’t. A carebear empire can be destroyed by a few bored players, not to mention established alliances. EVE PvE isn’t complicated: go to asteroid, start harvesters. Or accept mission, read website, follow it to the letter. Being rich in EVE is no guarantee of having brain cells. Many very rich pilots literally have no brain cells: they are farmbots. Besides trading, the only activity that needs a functioning brain is PvP. So this society must exist outside highsec, enforcing members to either PvP or learn to avoid it.

So I want to foster a society of players who are both good in making ISK and know how to PvP (even if they don’t bother to initiate it). Damn, it smells very much as WH. Highsec players literally can’t respond to flashy reds in local, while nullsec players literally grind structures in bombless bombers, while WH players have OK income and they have to learn at least sneaking and avoiding PvP to survive. So far, so good, if the above two would be my goals, I would be a model WH player living happily in a C6 corp.

My problem with WH space comes with the third goal: individualism. With my income and killboard results I proved the power of the player who acts on his own decision. He is risking his own property, learns from his own mistakes, waits for nobody, get things into his hands. WH space on the other hand demands the most blind trust in your leaders. In sov-nullsec your property is safe in stations, even if you are kicked out of your alliance, you can sell it or contract-haul it, not to mention that you fly worthless crap. In WH-space the awox or the incompetence of a leader can destroy multiple billions you had. The security risks of this mean that leaders can’t be lenient with recruitment or rules. Unless you are one of the leaders, you must be a totally subjected minion, or spies and awoxers surely destroy everything. I couldn’t support such organization in any means.

So my goal is rich, PvP-able and individualistic. There is no such organization in EVE. And honestly, I have no idea how to build it. But I’ll figure out.

18 comments:

Anonymous
said...

With my income and killboard results I proved the power of the player who acts on his own decision. He is risking his own property, learns from his own mistakes, waits for nobody, get things into his hands. WH space on the other hand demands the most blind trust in your leaders.I was with you up to this. You are actually not quite right here. WH space generally has the most individualistic focused fleets and groups going. Sure there are obvious rules that need to be followed - you don't have a working society without rules. But in terms of just going some where and stirring up a shit storm? or creating some new way of making isk or acting on your own, you'll probably find most decent top tier wormhole corps would have no problem with you doing that.

There usually IS secrecy when it comes to stratops, but most of the time things are clear.. "we're rolling for these guys and they have this many things and we're taking this kind of fleet"

Most also these days have solid fleet doctrines, built out of stupidly expensive hulls and fits. The kind of thing you used to think would be amazing. The average cost of a T3 in the fleets I fly in run up near 1bn isk and some bling fits even more. 5bn+ moroses are not uncommon and there are even "moroses fit like titans" floating around which cost 10s of billions. So this is in keeping with your goals and "being the best" and "using money to be the best"

But..your biggest problem here is that none of the top tier wormhole alliances would even look at you. They are already space rich and don't need you to tell them how to be space rich. They'd take one look at your blog and probably decide to try and awox you.

First wh corp should have a Personal hanger array. Each member gets a secure storage module that while it can be destroyed and looted but can not be otherwise stolen from. Only 1 corp per wormhole needs this.

Mobile Depots can be stored at various places, both under guns and in deep safes. Giant Secure containers also work.

A rule that you don't kill fellow corp member depots or gsc's is identifiable by corp kill logs & insta boot.

In the foo corps, we have divisions available for rent.

Optionally, you pay roughly 1/7th of POS fuel costs for your own division to store ships, loot etc in a LSAA. Suggested storage quotas are 1/7 of total space (and it's a lot). If you exceed quota (possibly after being reminded), your surplus stuff is put into free for all freight containers.

More than 7 pilots? more POS. What best security, rent a spot in a large POS. Want good enough security, rent a spot in a small to medium POS.

You trust that you are not stolen from by CEO or director. Recommend director as second player to ensure POS refuelling/enabling gun operations are available if CEO is offline (away, broken internet etc).

A single rogue CEO/director only affects the corp that the ceo/director is in. That is, by preference you are only CEO or director for 1 corp, but a trusted player could be CEO of 2 or more (with different alts).

In the event of an attack, we keep surplus guns anchored but offline, and grant all players the ability to online modules. Offlining, unanchoring is still restricted.

Encourage someone to offer a WH purchase program; where they offer to take stuff to market (at a profit).

Capital flying is not just an ISK investment but also a pilot skill investment. I am not interested in buying pilots for personal use.

In the Foo corps, we offer various wormholes (all under c5) for subcap pilots to fly in.

Faction towers offer higher upfront costs for lower ongoing fuel costs; and pay for themselves within a year. We have chosen not to use faction towers to not attract additional unwanted visitors looking for a shiny kill.

"WH space on the other hand demands the most blind trust in your leaders."

Absolutely untrue. Trusting your leader blindly or for good reasons is just one way to play in WH space.

What if your society camped in WH space, if you had enough people you could connect every system. Now your society has the intel. Imagine if your society was the only one in nulsec with local chat. Think of the power that would give you. That is what you would have in WH space.

Now that T3s can reconfigure in space you'll never need a different ship. Log off some capital pilots in C5-6s to trigger cap escalations and you'll have all the isk you could want.

The solution is simple, in concept if not in execution: you must form your own WH corp. As the leader, you will not have to be a totally subjected minion, you will instead be the one in charge of the minions.

The other alternative is to found some sort of hisec wardeccing corp funded by market pvp. Again, you would be the leader, not the minion, and your minions would have to be capable of funding ships that fit into your fleet doctrines.

Gevlon, it is fascinating to read about your soul searching. I admire your openness, I can hardly imagine being myself so exposed to the world. But even more important is that to you are making great progress - and I do not mean what kind of game you play, but rather that you have reached next level in self reflection.

In June I left following comment to your blog: "However my crystal ball remains cloudy if Gevlon fixes his theory and will ever admit his mistakes openly."

Today there is no question about that anymore. You have openly admitted failure and you are learning from it. This is behavior I can respect and relate.

It is not possible for me to recommend what you should do in this game. It is down to what *you* want and nobody else can figure it out for you. Respect? ISK? Dominance? Skills? Change? What really drives you? How would you like others see you?

Your post reminded me about Ray Dalio's principles - which should fit well with your goal oriented approach. He was very successful investor in real life, like you mastered in-game markets, and you probably find similarities your approach in his text.

Hello Mr. Goblin,i think you need a dream/objective before formulating a plan, making a impact in the game doesn's count as objective.

You are also looking for trusteful elite players that know both PvP and Money making skills, but do you know how many of those players exists? and do you know how to attract them to your side? Do you know how to keep them with you?Those are question that can only be answered with a clear purpose in mind, even if that purpose is a lie.

About your ganking project, the problem with that is very simple; Nobody cares about poor fitted ships or bots being destroyed, and i (maybe just me) dont care about podkills. Everyone can do that, but not everyone can kill a Ishtar in High-sec, not everyone can destroy big Alliances POCOS and not everyone can hunt and hurt some big Corp alone as Mr. Kane does.

The bigger your challenge, the bigger will be the impact ingame. Legends are made from hard fights, the easy ones are for noobs.

As a side note, you should rethink about "Carebears", they are cheap expandable minions that have some utility to save your time. In a fight they are more targets to fill your enemys Overview, in industry they are more research slots, more PI, more Hauling, more scouting. Most Carebears are the WoW type that just need someone to say "Do that and that, heres your Cookie."

Could you please write something about the impact of Rubicon for PI highsec? What you think is going to happen from now?The Wetware frame is selling for 4,5mil+, most POfficers are 15% tax and i got hurt a lot by that. Had 3 factory planets there. =(

Always wait until the month after an exansion. Most guesses are flat out wrong, because they didn't see some variable. The ones that are right are almost always too late to capitalize on it, like fortelling the future a minute from now.

Just keep an eye on the commmodities. You'll see two bubbles. the first is people speculating on the information, so those already in place will benefit. then it will drop again, while people try to sell, then the hoarders depress the price until stocks are depleted, then the actual price will kick in, that usually takes a month on minor things (e.g. interceptors) and a year on major ones (zydrine trit) so it's really not worth it, so many speculators make any analysis based on the game itself useless, you're better off with a psychologist who studies human behaviour, and just apply it carte blanche

As others have suggested, lowsec and NPC nullsec match some of what you are looking for (not highsec, no sov grinding). You should also consider Providence region. It's sov space run under NRDS rules, so it's different from everything else. Whether it's good or bad is a matter of opinion of course.

There is a character called Aaron who has been trying to setup something similar in Stain. The key thing being to setup a market which becomes the hub, which is why it is called Hub-Zero. He is just about to make another go at it and has started a thread in General Discussions.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=297108

You will see a lot of attacks on this player, however he really does want to do this. The key thing however is that it needs a market from which the system is based and you could be in a very good position to develop that and profit from it.

I was part of the second attempt and am likely to join Aaron for this attempt, it could be interesting for you.

You can't have much challenge in WoW, right? So I though. and a few weeks back I was joking around with a friend that the mmo industry tries to be more drunk friendly than ever. especially WoW. If you want challenge you have to solo group content or charge solo into grp pvp or openworld pvp cities. otherwise you have ilvl goal and maybe some AVs.

Well, he pointed me to some Guy named Prepared.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Greatfett/videoshttp://www.ripten.com/2008/10/10/wow-whore-has-36-accounts-raids-by-himself/[the dualbox forum reference is broken, so you'll have to digg for yourself in their forums)

I don't know his current motivation but the quote from the article might help in your "goal" finding.

his goal was max mayhem and secondary 10/25 man solo raiding.

A lot have asked me, why create so many? The main reason is to invade Stormwind and Ironforge when they reach top level. .. I'm also planning to do some 25 and 10 man raid instances but that is secondary to my PvP goal.

and

"It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule. Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."